“What?” Kylar said. Wheels were turning too fast for him to catch up. “Jarl,” he said. “Tenser isn’t Tenser Vargun. Don’t you see? He got himself thrown in the Hole so he can do the hardest time there is. Then they produce the real baron—alive—and Tenser is released. He comes to the Sa’kagé a month later with a grudge for his false imprisonment and all the access of a duke and what happens?”

“We take him in,” Jarl said quietly. “How could we resist?”

“And he destroys you, because he’s not Tenser Vargun,” Kylar said. “He’s Tenser Ursuul.”

Jarl sat back, stunned. After a minute, he said, “You see, Kylar? This is why I need you. Not just for your skills, for your mind. If Tenser’s there right now, he’s only going to wait long enough that his stay in the Hole is credible, and then he’ll tell his father that Logan’s in there. We have to go now. Now!”

The ring box was burning against Kylar leg. He looked through the open window as Jarl spoke, seeing the city he’d hoped would be his home for the rest of his life. He loved this city, loved the hope here, loved healing and helping, loved the simple pleasure of being praised for his potions. He loved Elene. She proved to him that he could do more good by healing than by killing. It all made sense …and yet …and yet….

“I can’t,” Kylar said. “I’m sorry. Elene would never understand.”

Jarl rocked back on two legs of the chair. “Don’t get me wrong, Azo, because I grew up with Elene too, and I love the girl. But why do you give a shit what she thinks?”

“Fuck, Jarl.”

“Hey, I’m just asking.” Then he let the question sit, his eyes never leaving Kylar’s face.

The bastard, he really had been studying under Momma K for all those years.

“I love her.”

“Sure, that’s part of it.”

Again, that I’m-waiting stare.

“She’s good, Jarl. I mean, like people aren’t good where we came from. Not good because it will get her something. Not good because people are watching. Just good. At first I thought she was just made that way, you know, like your skin is black and I’m devastatingly handsome.”

Jarl raised an eyebrow. He didn’t laugh.

“But now I’ve seen that she has to work at it. She does work at it, and she’s been working at it for as long as I’ve been working at learning to kill people.”

“So she’s a saint. Doesn’t answer my question,” Jarl said.

Kylar was silent for a full minute. He rubbed the grain of the wood table with a fingernail. “Momma K used to say that we become the masks we wear. What’s under the mask for us, Jarl? Elene knows me in a way no one else does. I’ve changed my name, changed my identity, left everything and everyone I’ve ever known. I’m all lies, Jarl, but as long as Elene knows me, maybe there is a real me. Do you know what I mean?”

“You know,” Jarl said. “I was wrong about you. When you got yourself killed saving Elene and Uly, I thought you were a hero. You’re no hero. You just fucking hate yourself.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a coward. So you’ve done bad stuff. Join the club. You know what? I’m glad you did; it made you something better than a saint.”

“A killer’s better than the saint? What sort of fucked-up Sa’kagé thinking is—”

“It made you useful. Do you know what it’s like in Cenaria right now? You wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t come here to find a killer. I came to find The Killer, the Night Angel, the man who’s more than just a wetboy because the problems we have now are bigger than any wetboy could handle. There’s only one man who can help us, Kylar, and that’s you. Believe me, you weren’t my first choice.” He stopped abruptly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jarl wouldn’t meet his eye. “I didn’t mean—”

“What were you about to say?” Kylar said in a dangerous tone.

“We had to be sure, Kylar. We were very respectful, I want you to know that. It was Momma K’s idea. He used to be immortal, we had to make sure …”

“You dug up my master’s corpse?” Kylar demanded.

“We put it—him—back just how you’d buried him.” Jarl winced. “It was maybe a week after the invasion—”

“You dug him up while I was still in the city?”

“We couldn’t tell you beforehand, and afterward there was no reason to. Momma K said the body would be there, that Durzo had given his immortality to you, but when she saw him…. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, Kylar. I mean, I was practically raised by the woman and I’ve never seen her like that. Hysterical, weeping and screaming—here we are, in the middle of the cloudy night, we’d paddled out to Vos Island with oars wrapped in wool, and she starts wailing, out of her mind. I was so sure a patrol would come that I wanted to get off the island immediately, but she wouldn’t leave until he was just how you left him.”

Like Kylar cared that Durzo be left on that damned rock. If they were going to dig him up, they could have at least brought him…. Where? Home? What home did Durzo Blint ever have?

“How’d he look?” Kylar asked quietly.

“Shit. He looked like he’d been in the ground a week, what do you think?”

Of course he did. Dammit, Master Blint, why’d you give me your immortality? Were you just sick of living? Why didn’t you tell me anything? But then, maybe he had told him in the note he’d given Kylar: the note that had been soaked with blood, illegible. “You want me to break into the Hole and save Logan?”

“Do you know who the Godking keeps as his concubines? Young girls from noble families. Prefers virgins. He guesses how much humiliation and debasement each girl can take. Puts them in tower rooms with balconies where all the railings have been torn off so the jump beckons every day. It’s a game for him.”

Kylar kept his voice hard. “Get to the point.”

“He took Serah and Mags Drake. Serah killed herself in the first week. Mags is still there.”

Serah and Mags were practically Kylar’s sisters. Mags had always been his pal. Always quick with a laugh, always smiling. He’d been so self-absorbed since the coup that he’d barely thought of them.

Jarl said, “I want you to rescue Logan, and then I want you to assassinate the Godking.”

“Is that all?” Coldly amused. It was a tone Kylar had heard Durzo use a hundred times. “Let me guess, Logan first because my odds with the Godking aren’t so great?”

“That’s right,” Jarl said angrily. “That’s how I have to think, Kylar. I’m fighting a war, and people better than us are dying in it every day. And you’re sitting around because of what some girl thinks?”

“Don’t you talk about Elene.”

“Or what? You’ll breathe heavily on me? You’re the dumbass who swore off violence. Yes, I know about that. Let me tell you something. Roth made a lot of people miserable. I’m glad you killed him, all right? He fucked me up bad. But he doesn’t hold a candle to his father.” Jarl swore. “Look at yourself! I know this hit is impossible. I’m sending you after a god. But if anyone in the world can do it, it’s you. You were made for this, Kylar. Do you think you made it through all the shit you made it through so you can sell hangover potions? Some things are bigger than your happiness, Kylar. You can give hope to an entire nation.”

“It’ll only cost me everything,” Kylar whispered. His face was gray.

“You’re an immortal. There’ll be other girls.”

Kylar gave him a disgusted look.

Jarl’s expression changed instantly. “I’m sorry. I guess there will be other Godkings and other Shingas too. I just …we need you. Logan will die if you don’t come. So will Mags, and so will a lot of other people you’ll never know.”

It would have been easier if he disagreed with anything Jarl said. Kylar had asked Momma K, “Can a man change?” Here was his answer, and it sucked the life right out of him. “All right,” Kylar said. “I’ll take the contract.”

Jarl smiled. “It’s good to have you back, my friend.”